A desperate measure

Arizona's just-signed immigration legislation, mean-spirited and possibly unconstitutional though it may be, is a reflection of the growing frustration with Washington on this issue.

Arizona's just-signed immigration legislation, mean-spirited and possibly unconstitutional though it may be, is a reflection of the growing frustration with Washington on this issue.

President Barack Obama, while campaigning for the White House, had promised comprehensive immigration reform would be a priority.

But the fact is, other priorities - two wars, a collapsing economy and health care - got in the way. And now still more priorities - financial oversight legislation and a vacancy on the Supreme Court - mean this issue will remain on the back legislative burner.

That doesn't mean the issue isn't on the minds of voters or that it won't stay there.

Politicians of all stripes will use the issue if they believe it can curry favor with voters.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who has repeatedly broken with his party on immigration and supported a strong, comprehensive, bipartisan reform legislation, now not only denies he is a "maverick" but doesn't have much taste for immigration reform.

Being in a tough primary election fight, he finds himself in the position of having to out-conservative his more conservative opponent.

Likewise, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, also facing a tough re-election fight, this month told a Las Vegas audience of mostly Latinos that the issue was a top priority only to backtrack the next day when the White House made it clear it has another list of priorities.

That kind of political waltzing - and McCain and Reid are hardly the only pols on the dance floor - doesn't engender confidence in the nation's state legislatures, whose members are under voter pressure too.

As always, that do-something pressure on the immigration issue increases during tough economic times, when immigrants become easy targets for all that's going wrong.

Constitutionally, it is the federal government that is obliged to control the borders and immigration. The reality, certainly in the eyes of Arizona lawmakers, is that nobody is controlling anything, but they're willing to give it a try.

The Arizona law signed Friday would require immigrants to carry "alien registration" cards and for police to check immigration status whenever there's "reasonable suspicion" a person is in the U.S. illegally.

Of course, one person's reasonable suspicion is another person's harassment, a point made only too clear recently by Roger M. Mahony, the archbishop of Los Angeles, on his Catholic Church blog, where he called Arizona's proposed law "the country's most retrogressive, mean-spirited and useless anti-immigration law."

"I can't imagine Arizonans now reverting to German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques whereby people are required to turn one another in to the authorities on any suspicion of documentation," he wrote.

These are strong words from a man who has spent most of his years as a priest working with immigrant and minority populations. But unfortunately, his words likely will be drowned out in the political whirlwind of the coming elections, making calm, studied consideration of this complex issue all but impossible.

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